First Drive Of The Abandoned Pre-Merger AMG Car That Sat For 27 Years! Fixing/Preparing Everything!

hey guys welcome back to legit street cars today we are back with the 1984 500 sel pre-merger amg car and we're gonna get this thing driving for the first time in 27 years all right so i'm back with mark from young timer's garage he's got quite the collection of mercedes so definitely check out his channel i'll have it linked down below but since i was here last and we got this car started he's installed some new wheels and i think these look absolutely perfect on this car they look to me like they're period correct yeah these are actually real three-piece amg oz wheels i picked these up uh several months ago uh when i bought a red 94 500 scl and i just bought the car pretty much for the wheels because it is hard to find these wheels so um back in the 80s you could have ordered these uh three-piece wheels from their catalog you know when you were building a pre-merger car i'll probably try to color match the centers of the wheels to the car when i get that far but i just had to throw them on because the other tires were dry rotted so we don't want to drive on those yeah it was definitely a good call to swap out these wheels and tires before its first drive these things are very dry rotted rock hard and that is just what happens to tires when they sit around for many many decades today we need to get this thing to drive so we were able to start the engine on starting fluid in the last video [Music] let's kill it but the issue is a bad fuel pump so we have a brand new fuel pump straight from mercedes and we have a new fuel filter some miscellaneous fuel hose as well some of the hose down there is not in the best of condition so these fuel pumps are pretty easy it's just about as easy as replacing an inline fuel filter because it's just an inline pump and i'm always discovering stuff with this car but it has the original rubber or plastic jacking mounts those usually are all missing on older cars and these are in mint condition so mark was telling me these wheels are worth over four thousand dollars now as you can imagine it's hard to find this kind of stuff especially in this good of condition these things are perfect all right so here it is a very very easy fuel pump and filter to replace so right now i'm just clamping it off so we don't get fuel all over the place i mean we're going to lose some but clamping off the main fuel line which is this one here and we actually have to replace this entire line it's got a pipe spliced into it from the last guy but it's leaking up close by the fuel tank just a little bit so that's got to get redone not a big deal for now man we have the battery disconnected so with that i'm going to go ahead and loosen up some clamps actually first let's disconnect the electrical connection and don't drop the little star washer see these little guys right here they're always missing oh there it goes and that's why these are always missing and they always make for such a good connection so try not to lose these then we can just slide this wire off battery's definitely disconnected most important part of the job and then just one more little guy's a seven down there and then this one's an eight mil all right here we go star washer holding the camera and i'm not going to drop this one look at that we're going to break this free for the first time you always want to counter hold you want to bend anything there we go the fuel filter now so the fuel filter uses a banjo bolt and they're going to be these crush washers on the fuel filter and the fuel pump you got to replace these make sure you're getting the right size some of these are different sizes and then this line just slide over like that okay now we have the line at the back of the fuel filter there we go all right all right one last hose and we are disconnected and we already replaced this hose in the last videos leaking there we go i'm holding the nut with my finger right now that's how nice this thing is underneath there's no rust or anything that is so nice such a change compared to everything else i'm working on and here comes the old pump and the old filter there we go and just like that we're going back together this is about a 20-minute job if that sure the dealer charges a lot for it but you guys can definitely do in-line fuel pumps and in-line fuel filters yourself it's very easy it's almost as easy as using keeps because two out of three men will experience some form of male pattern baldness before the age of 35 and i'm definitely one of those guys so keeps is a subscription service that makes treating male pattern baldness easy and affordable by keeping everything online so you're going to consult with a real doctor from the comfort of your own home come up with a plan and this gets shipped discreetly to your house and it's as easy as a few drops on your head so i've been using keeps for about five months now and it typically takes between four and six months to start showing results so the sooner you start the more hair you're gonna save and the best part is if you guys click on my link in the video description box or go to keeps.com legit you're gonna save 50 off your first order so a big thanks to keeps for keeping my hair where it should be on my head and for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself now let's get back to this super easy fuel filter and fuel pump okay so because these things make noise they put this really thick rubber boot around them kind of helps out with that you can still hear them run though all right so the rubber boot that was on the car may not be the original it doesn't fit on this pump this pump is straight from mercedes and look at what was on the car this little guy right here so i'm not sure if the factory pump comes with the rubber boot or not we'll have to check that out later but for now not a big deal get our new washer on there okay okay all right all the lines and hoses are attached we replaced a couple with proper fuel hose although it's red so it doesn't really look that good so black fuel hose is on order not trying to turn this into a fake amg car with red hose we went from inline fuel filters like this some cars had in-tank fuel filters and basically fuel filters that you couldn't even replace these were the easy days fuel pump and filter taking no time at all we'll make our connections and these only go on one way so you can't screw this up put on our little star washers now don't tighten these too much you can break the stud off a little goes a long way all right just like that our fuel pump and filter replacement is complete let's get under the hood and replace the relay too definitely not a light wheel here that's for sure okay so here is our fuel pump relay it is gigantic and we were having some intermittent issues with this the last time sometimes it'd send power back there sometimes it wouldn't very common failure point so mark bought a new one this was like a hundred and fifty dollars they're crazy expensive but very easy to swap out pull up on it and then plug the new one in and we should be in business all right so he's still rocking the used porsche battery all right so that is connected and this should be its first start on its own without starting fluid all right let her rip [Laughter] it's kind of weak and we might need to jump this thing off it's pretty weak right now all right go for it try it again okay all right hang on so this guy will not start on its own and i want to make sure we have fuel coming to the engine the fuel pump definitely works now yeah there's definitely fuel coming out right here oh yeah oh yeah it's got good fuel pressure and it's not starting it's possible these injectors are clogged but i would imagine we'd get it to fire a little bit and we're not getting anything at all we know it'll run great with the starting fluid so the actual engine the ignition system everything is fine uh this is all fuel right now all right so we're gonna start it up on the starting fluid and see if it'll continue to run it wants to catch whereas before it didn't do anything at all so here we go no no it needs this to survive all right so at this point i want to make sure that we're getting fuel at the fuel injectors because we know we're getting it at the rail and then by cracking one of these lines yep we got the fuel right there we know that the injection pump and everything is working to a certain degree fuel is coming to these fuel injectors it's possible these are all just clogged up from sitting for almost three decades i'm going to be tapping on the injectors just very gently just like that kind of sending vibrations through the injector to see if we can clean up the seat and sometimes you can bring these back to life so we're not going too crazy and this might just be enough to unseat the garbage that's clogging up these injectors these fuel injectors we're not the best at atomization this is the very beginning of fuel injection i mean it's still mechanical um but yeah these this should fire this should fire even if it's dribbling down there these weren't the most precise injectors to begin with so i'll give them a few more whacks here and i bet you this will catch just a little bit [Applause] all right try now come on all right guys so i just want to see fuel pressure flowing fuel okay and see this right here this is completely loose we're not getting any actual fuel to the injector even though we had some residual fuel pressure there we're not really getting any fuel flow so it might have just built up a little bit of fuel in the line and that's it and i don't have a ton of experience with this but i have to verify that we're getting fuel in and out so i'm going to start disconnecting some lines here and basically we're tracing the fuel backwards um to see where it's not flowing out of all right so right now i'm going to crack this line here and we have good fuel pressure right here now i want to see this flow so go ahead mark and uh crank the engine watch the fire all right go ahead and crank it mark oh try it try it again look at that it's running it's alive it's not its own fuel system and we definitely have fuel flow right here and then it dies out when i create a fuel leak at this line right here the engine starts and runs as soon as i tighten this up it's just dead like an on off switch okay i wasn't really expecting that but we've definitely found something we got to trace this line and i can already see it's got two it's got a big one and kind of a smaller line going right here okay so we have to figure out what this guy does when we make our own fuel leak this engine runs and that line goes right here and it looks like we have an electrical connector this is some kind of valve some kind of fuel valve when i started as an apprentice in 2003 we didn't see any of these in 1984 was ancient it was long at the independent shop by then so we had a couple old timers that would work on these but not me i never really worked on these much i've adjusted uh the lambda here you can adjust the air fuel with i think it's like a four millimeter allen so i might play with that but we have to figure out what's going on with this valve it's possible that this is something to do with the return um and it's not returning back to the tank something along those lines but anyway it runs on its own fuel system but only with a huge fuel leak which isn't going to work all right so we found out that this is a warm-up regulator i guess it has something to do with adjusting the amount of fuel that's at the top and the bottom of the central injection pump so what i want to see is if this regulator is working i've already tried disconnecting it it still won't start and it looks like we have the fuel possibly going in this side and then it's got one more line that goes all the way around back up to the central fuel pump here so i'm gonna crack that line and see if i can make this thing run again and then we're just gonna keep on tracing it back to see if it's getting its fuel back to the central fuel pump it's possible it's not all right mark i've started the leak so go ahead and see if it'll start try again try again okay i think it'll start i think if we made a big enough leak it would start again i just didn't make that big of a leak so let's do this this is where that little line ends up it's got a little bit of a leak here too but i'm gonna crack this loose wow so it's got it's got plenty of fuel right there all right so mark's got a friend that's worked on these before and he had mentioned that we can actually tap this pin down and that might free up the gunk that's actually a way of adjusting it so i'm just going to do this very lightly i swear if we end up fixing this car with a hammer and a punch it's going to be nuts all right let's try it again we just it went down a tiny bit this little pin that's all me right there so yeah it'll die okay this is actually affecting the fuel i mean we're obviously bringing air in this way but by me pushing this down is injecting fuel too so i was able to do that i don't believe tapping this did anything at that point um all right try it again mark all right so i know what you guys are thinking this is just simply a normal throttle right and by opening it like this we're just getting more air in and that is not the case mark go ahead and floor it see that that's how they function so you won't actually see this go down with the pedal unless the engine is running by me pushing it down like this there's actually a ton of resistance and you can hear that see right now there's not it's gotta pump back up see that right now we're injecting fuel just by doing that that's how i was able to get it to run it's a fuel thing it's not an air thing i haven't really gotten anywhere with this guy if we create the leak right there and that line runs to this it will run and it will shut off when i tighten that up i have a feeling this needs to be taken apart and cleaned but from what i understand this thing has something to do with regulating the fuel that goes to the bottom and the top of the central injection system here so at this point i'm going to do the one thing on these engines that i did learn at the dealer when i was 18 years old a very long time ago and you can adjust the air fuel mixture right here with a three millimeter allen okay and i think it was clockwise to make it more rich counterclockwise to lean it up someone's been in here before i can tell there are some scrape marks in there and i remember there used to be a little ball in here that you'd have to drill out in order to adjust this because the factory didn't want you to mess with it so i'm going to go ahead and richen this up a little just going to go one full turn so we remember where we were and mark go ahead and try and start it now well there we have it okay all right that was the best start on its own fuel system that we've gotten i'm just going to give it one more all right go ahead oh it wants to go all right we'll give it one more go ahead [Music] try again [Laughter] and it dies okay all right that's not doing anything either i'm just going to go ahead and put it back to its factory settings i did this five times and one more okay all right guys so it's actually about two weeks later and check this out [Music] oh yeah this thing runs smooth look at that perfect sounds amazing so you're probably wondering what did we do so after i discovered that creating a fuel leak here would make the engine run we did some research and everything was pointing to this the warm-up regulator so mark contacted an old friend of his who has some experience with these engines and he agreed this was suspect so long story short mark removed this and his friend basically just took it apart and cleaned it and now it works so the reason it wouldn't stay running and this is where it gets kind of crazy is this regulator regulates the amount of fuel at the top of the distributor that goes into the return line so back to the fuel tank this thing was stuck shut which means it was blocking the fuel now i would normally think that that would increase the fuel pressure and it would still run but in this case it actually decreases the fuel pressure and in our case the fuel pressure was too low to open the mechanical injectors and make the engine run without us either creating that leak or pushing down on this plate this is called a sensor plate and this is what directly increases or decreases the fuel pressure that the injectors see so when it sees that decrease in fuel pressure because of this regulator this will actually go down a little bit and increase the fuel pressure that goes to the injectors so this main fuel distribution block has two portions to it it has a lower and an upper this is what actually feeds the injectors this is what's actually connected to the return line eventually internally i'm sorry i don't have any diagrams guys i hope that was a decent explanation but basically because this regulator increases the fuel flow to the return line it pushes that down and it injects more fuel and we created an artificial leak which mimicked the fuel going back to the tank comment down below if that made any sense to you guys i couldn't find any diagrams it's a very ancient system that no one really works on including myself but i think that makes sense to me anyway with that let's continue working on this car we got to get it ready for its first drive oh and i almost forgot his friend also installed a known good used fuel distributor we weren't really sure if the original one was bad so he saved it but that's on here and he removed all of this stuff it's mostly for emissions but you can see this plug has gone here but he said in his experience this just adds a bunch of complications oh and the wool seat covers are off and check these out tell me these aren't the coolest 80s amg floor mats you've ever seen they're so so plush and mark kind of just wiped down the interior it was already in such good condition but just look at these seats 30 000 miles i'm pretty sure they've been covered forever and it's basically mint in here i don't know if i've ever seen an older mercedes interior this nice all right so because this car hasn't been on the road in about 27 years i want to go around and replace a lot of stuff mostly fluids but we have some hoses here that are feeling a little harder than i'd like and we're going to start off with a coolant flush we might need a new cap as well there we go okay all right so i couldn't find a drain on this radiator we're gonna replace this hose anyway so let's just go ahead and get mark's garage floor messy oh yeah look at that look at that precision mark there's only about a half gallon on the floor it's not bad this coolant looks really good though really good we probably didn't need to do this but uh i didn't like the hoses they're too hard all right so i've drained most of the coolant with the car level now it's jacked up we're going to take the wheels off and see what kind of brakes we're working with all right so as to be expected you know they've just been kind of sitting around for a while so they're rusted there is a lip on the rotor the pads have pretty good life um so we'll see we'll see if we can get these parts i think it'd be okay to drive as is but if we can replace them might not be a bad idea all right lower radiator hose is out get off there we go goodbye tapos all right so mark went out to try and find a thermostat i'd like to replace that while we're in there but we are kind of at the mercy of the local auto parts stores for now so i'm trying to get as much done as possible so while he's out we're gonna flush out this nasty really really old brake fluid okay so i already did the right rear and for a car that's been sitting around forever these bleeder screws are just too easy look at that and mark has an air compressor so we can do this the easy way flushing out nasty brake fluid has got to be one of the most satisfying things look at all this nasty fluid get out of here eww so bad it's probably absorbed so much moisture over the years and look at this brake fluid so much better and you know i got to clean up this reservoir too makes all the difference in the world it's basically just like we went back to 1984. all right so mark said he found a thermostat and gasket so i'm going to go ahead and start taking this apart in hopes that the auto parts store person got the right part and it includes a gasket as well we'll see okay let's get this party started by taking out the oil dipstick tube and i'm going to disconnect some sensors here it looks like we have two coolant temperature sensors basically right next to each other weird let's get this harness out of the way and remove this hose okay now we have three large bolts that hold the housing down let's do those by hand okay a little scary not gonna lie and we're right next to a vacuum tube oh this is asking for it okay got it disconnected those things can definitely break okay last one yes telling you it's scary working on older cars you never know what you're gonna break there we go please come off nicely yes i know we'll lose a little bit more coolant mostly in the coolant drain so my marks four sorry mark oh it's pretty much all in the drain oh yeah oh okay there it is all right so here is the thermostat and uh it looks to be in excellent condition this could have been replaced the hose in the clamp that went here uh looked a little bit newer than the ones i removed so that's okay it's better to know that this is in good shape than to have a failure later down the road and we also were able to drain a lot more coolant all right next up is the differential so i'm going to open up the fill plug first so you don't want to drain fluid out and then this gets stuck and then you're screwed like right now all right this thing is stuck but i think we just need a little bit more leverage it'll be okay come on okay get on my fingers there's a close one there okay so that's good now we're gonna try the drain and it's very important on these cars that have been sitting for decades to check at least check the differential fluid because if it has even a little leak like this it doesn't look like much now but over the course of you know 30 40 years it could leak out to a dangerously low level let's see if i can not smash my fingers oh that one's nice [Music] good deal [Music] okay so let's see what we have here hopefully we have a lot of fluid yep that's good yeah i've seen these on the older cars basically just dribble out a couple drops and that's it so had you taken it for a ride you'd have been in big trouble like my jeep grand cherokee not even that old i think it'd been sitting for about five years bone dry because of a pinion leak in the back so this fluid doesn't look dirty nothing really concerns me here these are open differentials anyway so they're not that sensitive to fluid changes they don't need any additives anything like that and actually this will drain out even easier if we take this fill all the way out there we go all right time to fill up our differential and it looks like we're using a piece of pvc pipe here looks like a homemade fluid extractor pump but as long as we can push fluid out with it i don't care what it's made of and i got oh there we go i got a little all right so this is my fourth pcb tube full or pvc sorry i'm a car guy pvc most people get that wrong the opposite way all right number five going in there we go right there that's it all right cool don't want to overfill these either there's no need so let this drain out a little bit and right about there that feels good to me cool that is tight give it a little wipe here we'll fix this leak real quick there we go good as new okay new thermostat is in i can't believe that they had a factory bear thermostat at the local auto parts store but they did so i've already put a new seal on and now the thermostat goes right back in tighten these guys up by hand good okay now we just have a vacuum line an electrical connector there a temperature sensor plug there another one here and our little baby ground wire put on our hose and we're done with the thermostat and we are done with the thermostat as if this fuel system couldn't get any more weird this is a gigantic ac line and these are the two main fuel lines the fuel lines run through the ac line so the fuel is cooled by the air conditioning system before it enters the engine and i highly doubt they did this for an increase in power you can get a little bit more power by running cooler fuel i'd imagine they had a vapor lock issue back in the day and they had to add this system because they were experiencing some drivability issues during the testing phase of this m117 engine so with all of those metal fuel lines underneath there being obviously right next to the engine it's possible that they got so hot that it would turn the fuel into a vapor and could cause issues with running and starting and whatnot so they cooled the fuel off i don't know 126 guys is that why they did it have you guys experienced a car where the air conditioning system doesn't work and the engine runs poorly i'm very very curious on that this auto parts store that mark went to to find all the hoses has got to be so happy these have probably been sitting on their shelf for like 20 years and someone finally came in and bought them they can get them out of their inventory list now and so far they all seem to be the right hoses too yeah this one's not too bad okay i got the bottom hoses done now let's replace this upper hose these old mercedes clamps are still rock solid probably better than any of the clamps we would get at the auto parts store right now okay fresh coolant going in this 126 chassis pre-merger amg some of you guys in the last video were wondering what pre-merger meant well it just means that it was before mercedes and amg officially had a relationship so the first official amg mercedes car was 1995 with the c36 so anything before that was considered a pre-merger car amg was just a separate tuning shop it was just a place that you would send your mercedes to and they would soup it up so this being an 84 this was sent to amg and it was modified with the body kit and the suspension and some other little tidbits here and there so it's a pre-merger car anything before 95 pre-merger all right now that we have coolant in the engine we're going to run this thing to bleed out the air and at the same time we're going to perform an engine flush with this stuff the amsoil engine and transmission flush so this is very easy we're simply going to add it into the crankcase and when this warms up with the engine oil it's just going to go around and clean up any gunk especially on a car that's been sitting for a long time this is a great idea and you do this right before the oil change so we're going to be changing the oil you don't want to run this unless you know you're going to be changing the oil you're supposed to only give it about 10-15 minutes and then that's it okay so it's been about 15 minutes and we're gonna perform the first oil change on this car in about three decades okay wow let's see yep pretty black as expected yeah this is really dark ah it's kind of hot and it's definitely needed to be done before our first drive you don't want to drive a car around with 30 year old oil stuff breaks down just sitting there too especially conventional oil from this time and here is our oil filter housing so we're gonna take this cap off first you gotta pull the bolt out and you can slide the cap out of here and they give you a little handle on these old oil filters it's kind of cool little handle right here we'll see if the new one has that oh yes we have our handle black seal goes down and it just slides right in clean this up a little bit new seal there we go and reverse order very very easy basic oil change on second thought we are not going to use this cheap o-ring from the auto parts store see how small this is on the left is the factory on the right is the aftermarket and i don't think it's going to seal so we're going back with the original have to get one from mercedes later but i think this is gonna be just fine and what oil change would be complete without engine oil you gotta add engine oil back in i highly recommend it and in this case i'm using the amsoil european 540. i think this is the best synthetic oil on the market and i've been an amsoil dealer for about a year and a half now and you guys can get 25 off of all amsoil products by using my link in the video description box i'm not sponsored by amsoil i buy all my own stuff i am an independent dealer so every purchase you guys make helps me out okay last thing before we go for our first drive is i want to lubricate some of these linkages actually all of these linkages for this crazy fuel distribution block system there are little plastic cams and linkages everywhere and i'm pretty sure this was part of the service back in the day was just simply going around with this fine mercedes lube and just putting a little bit on them oh and we couldn't find all of the brake parts locally so we're just going to hold off on them right now the pads still have probably like 60 percent life on them and we could probably get away with leaving them we'll see how they clean up during the test drive um but yeah eventually to make this thing pristine new brakes would be in order oh and hang on before we go i got to show you something else that's pretty interesting with this car this has motor mounts with shocks there are two of them one on the other side this thing was just all about luxury and the ride so the engine got its own shocks all right so i've cleaned myself up but my clothes are still pretty gross so we have plenty of protection on the seat but i just want to show you something here everything including those engine mounts are about comfort look at this when you get in this is normal this is how they are so cushiony it's ridiculous all right here we go beautiful look at that start wow this is nice smooth is glass in here you can't even tell the engine's running and these power seats are really fast look at how fast these power seats are safety first look at that nice click right there of the seat belt even putting it into gear it's so smooth there's like no resistance mark just picked up a c36 so the first year of the merger with amg right there thing looks really nice i had a c43 a 99 so same body style but with the v8 engine i bought it for 200 that ran like a champ all right here we go first drive that's too nice beautiful shift oh man wow it's not the fastest car in the world but it's one of the smoothest the brake rotors are pulsating a little bit not too bad i say the steering's tight though this is just like a nice quarter throttle gentle look at this transmission perfect like butter all right you guys want to see a hole shot that is all the way down wow that's bad okay that's 60. that was like 15 seconds i'm thinking that maybe the uh fuel linkage might need to be adjusted that did not feel like wide open throttle if you guys own one of these cars are they that slow they can't be that slow oh we got the whistler on and this thing still works i'm hoping it'll kick off here if it picks something up it just goes crazy oh oh what did you find whistler so it might not be the fastest thing in the world it's kind of just a big floaty boat and the steering is just on point it's in great condition there we go there we go whistler's telling us we're driving by a school apparently because there are no cops anywhere around here but uh that is an old-school radar detector they are pretty annoying this thing is too cool all right just giving everything a final look we're gonna have to add a little bit of coolant there the oil filter housing is not leaking so that's good no coolant is leaking our brake fluid is still full so everything is good to go on the 500 sel but check out what else mark has in the garage he recently acquired the c36 and a cosworth 190e you guys aren't going to believe the mileage on this car just take a look take a look i might have to dedicate an entire video to this guy comment down below if you want to see more but look at how mint this is it's just perfect unreal it's like right off the showroom floor the body lines are absolutely mint look at the interior look at the seats look at the seats a little bit of wear there okay that's it but wow amazing the dash isn't cracked these are manual you never see manual mercedes and this is unbelievable look at this 280 000 kilometers so whatever that is in mileage it's still a ton it is still way more than i would have expected after seeing the car for the first time so it has the factory recaro seats you guys got to see the engine this is a very very rare car so this is a 16 valve 2.3 liter four-cylinder and these things rev up really high mark what do you shift this car at what's the red line oh seven thousand seven thousand wow yeah it's pretty cool all right with that i hope you guys really enjoyed bringing this pre-merger 1984 500 sel back to life after 27 years of hibernation i had a blast working on it naturally i had fun driving the thing too i can't wait to get my hands on that cosworth and you guys should definitely be checking out mark from young timer's garage he is obsessed with old mercedes and he's got a bunch of content on his channel and on instagram so i'll link all of that stuff down below i'm about to get eaten by some country mosquito bee hybrid or something so before i get bit give this video a like share the video subscribe if you're new check out mark most importantly have an awesome day i'll catch all of you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: LegitStreetCars

Views: 520,480

Keywords: RARE PRE-MERGER AMG CAR, FIRST START, ABANDONED CAR, WILL IT START?, MERCEDES AMG CAR, 500SEC, 500SEL, LEGITSTREETCARS AMG, ABANDONED AMG CAR, MERCEDES-BENZ

Id: CAAnoT5bCNI

Length: 40min 38sec (2438 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021